Jim Carroll wrote;
Ian:
"Or put it another way, go to a folk club and enjoy the experience for the spontaneous sport it is."
Perhaps you can explain something that others have been unable to.
Why is it not possible to do both - does understanding and taking a music seriously automatically prohibit somebody from actually enjoying it?
I have been involved in folk music for nearly fifty years, mainly as a listener and singer, but over the last thirty odd of those as a collector and researcher.
I write on the subject, talk on it, read about it, argue about it, issue CDs of our field recordings, archive it and am now preparing to publish a couple of books on Traveller songs and stories.
After all this time, Sheila Stewart singing 'Tifties Annie' still brings a lump to the throat and I can still fall out of my chair listening to Sam Larner sing 'Butter And Cheese And All'.
Do you think it's a genetic flaw - or what?
Jim Carroll

Thanks for that Jim. I agree, there is room for those who enjoy the noise it makes and those who see it as a fascinating study in it's own right.

My concern, and hence the mischievous opinions and provocative comments, is that many people have been driven away in the past by people who fail to make that distinction. As a teenager, I was almost paranoid about playing the wrong sort of song in a club in case some twerp pulled me up. McColl himself spoke of people should sing only what is indigenous to them. Good stuff, from a Salford lad called Jim who effected a Scottish name and sometimes accent.

It is where the technical study and the enjoyment meet that they can clash. How many people (myself included) have problems enjoying certain classical pieces because at school we had to follow a score with our fingers whilst the teacher walked round making sure we were keeping up? Not the best way to learn to love and appreciate artistic wonders! (To this day I turn off if I hear Mozart's 40th, despite knowing I would have loved it otherwise.)

I don't think this (or similar threads) is about spontaneous enjoyment versus study of the art form, but the two aspects (which make up the whole) mean different things to different people.

Hence I feel able to say that if it is played in a folk club it is a folk song, and you are able to say that's rubbish.

C'est la vie.